L'envol
2026 · 2m
Directed by Ambre Bellec
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Thomas, 22, is confronted with the death of his childhood friend Julie; entrusted with her ashes, he must find where to let them fly away while moving through his grief.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A grief film about scattering ashes—the premise reads like a Hallmark card, and Bellec doesn't seem interested in dismantling that expectation, which is precisely why I'm not interested either.
Bellec works within the contemplative tradition of European coming-of-age cinema with evident formal restraint; the two-minute constraint forces a clarity of image and editing that recalls the precision of Carruth or van der Keuken's shorter work.
The real architecture here is likely spatial—how Bellec frames Thomas's body moving through locations while holding the ashes, whether she's let the geography itself become the emotional choreography rather than scoring it with sentiment.